Changing the future
by Tactum Ignis
Summary: In the future, earth has been conquered by the Mogadorians, and Five himself is a general in Setrakus Ra's army-his very own right hand. But Five comes to see that a broken Earth isn't all it's cracked up to be. With the help of his master legacy, Five sets out to change everything.
1. Prologue

**Note: if time travel stories interest you, there's an awesome story with basically the same premise as this called "Changing History" with Adamus as the main character. It's great, I recommend it!**

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I'm not a psychopath. I'm an opportunist. My survival is more important to me than anything. At least, it was. Before I saw how the Mogadorians treated the humans. How they killed them. And the last of my species that were murdered.

How I stood by. How I helped the Mogadorians plan their deaths. My hatred of Nine. My murder of Eight. Their conquest of the world. I used to believe that there was only power, and those too weak to wield it. But touring the world, seeing how they were treated humans, beat them down, day after day, changed me. Shame festered in my soul.

It makes my penthouse seem fake. Every day, I'm reminded that everything I have is built on the deaths of my species and countless other deaths when I feel the eight scars on my leg.

And then I watched Setrakus Ra murder a mother and her child who dared to make noise during a speech. He didn't even do it himself, he ordered a faceless lackey. And they did it without questioning.

It made me sick.

Something needed to change. But I'm not strong enough to take on Setrakus Ra and the warships and all of them. Their systems are too strong, too widespread, too rooted. Only Pittacus Lore would have a chance.

And Pittacus Lore died eight years ago.

The entity must have sensed the change in me. It gave me the legacy I needed. I tested it first, snapping forward a few seconds, back a few seconds. Then minutes. Hours.

The snap I'm going to do now will be thousands of times further than I've tried. I'm going back 14 years, to when it all started. 2004. I could die from the effort. But it needed to be done.

I didn't use any of my legacies for a full week before. Consuming proteins, sleeping ten hours a night. Saving the energy.

The day of my trip, I entered the Mogadorian database and copied down all the information they had about the garde. Locations, dates, deaths, suspected sightings, and then suspicious scout disappearances. Practically everything the Mogs had about the nine. My searches and database history are saved. That's why I couldn't do this earlier.

I can't afford mistakes. The nine are each strong, ten times stronger than a regular garde from Lorien was, but together, they would be unstoppable. If I fail to stop even one of their deaths, the likelihood of them succeeding drops drastically.

And then there's Ella. The heir, the princess of Mogadore and Earth. Time and Setrakus Ra have turned her into a monster. Like I was. The earliest information they had about her was that she was seen at the Dulce base attack.

Certain things that I can't plan for. Only hope to change and figure out along the way.

My own life doesn't matter. The Nine do. Five in the past might as well be a completely different person than I am. If I succeed, they'll all be different than how they were.

The man didn't bother to exit the database. He sat on a chair a few feet away and closed his eyes, clenched his fists. Gathering focus and energy as boots stormed up the stairwell.

As the door splintered inward, the man flashed his eyes open. Eye contact was made for a split second. The man vanished.

And everything changed.


	2. Chapter 1

**So yeah, in typical fashion it's taken me a year to update...haha (6/24/19)**

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I appear standing on the ground. I topple forward, putting my hands out in front of me. My muscles are suddenly sore beyond belief, and my arms fold, making me face-plant. I writhe and struggle to my feet. The notes I wrote are floating away. I focus and pull them back to my hand, gripping them tightly between my thumb and pointer finger. I'm suddenly hit with pounding waves of nausea and a splitting migraine. It's all I can do to not cry out or moan as I slowly bend down before falling on my behind. I stretch out and stare at the sky, focusing on my breathing and the papers clutched in my head. An eternity passes in this way, although it was probably just 15 or 20 minutes. When I become aware, I'm sweating and trembling. It takes much longer for the trembling to stop before I can get up and lean against a wall.

I case my surroundings. I'm in an alley.

I purposefully aimed for ten days before the deaths of One and her Cepan in Malaysia. I don't know how far back I've managed to come. I need to find a newspaper, or a computer, something to tell the date. My stomach rumbles. I'm dressed in Mogadorian military casual clothing, which is basically the same as the Mogadorian military uniform. It's black, or a dark purple, with Mogadorian glyphs like those on the heads of soldiers imprinted in a lighter gray tone over my chest and arms. The cepan will never trust me if I'm wearing this.

I fold the notes as much as I can and push them into my pocket. I need money, food, and casual human clothes. I look around. I'm in a city. There's a fabric store next to me. I go to the counter inside and push the single cashier back with my mind, holding her there. A minor wave of nausea hits me and I struggle to remain upright. Usually it'd be effortless, but the snap must have drained my energy. I can't restrict her as much as I'd like. I hold her jaw shut as I open the drawer, pulling all the money out. It's a few hundred dollars, enough for a change of decent clothes and a meal with money left over.

I don't want to be robbing everywhere I go for what I need. Just money is what I'll take, and hopefully not for long. Once I make contact with One's Cepan, I won't be robbing any more. If I succeed at saving her, that is. And if she believes me.

My next stop is a clothing store. I purchase a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with some reference I don't know printed on the front. I left the mogadorian clothing in the bathroom after making sure I took everything I brought out of its pockets. That was limited to the papers. As I look around at the city, I realize I've come back at least eight years. There's no sign of the destruction wrought by the forces of Setrakus Ra when the invasion started. I spot a newspaper stand across the street and move slowly across. This jump has weakened me immensely. There's a weight and exhaustion in every one of my limbs.

I slip two quarters into the stand-quarters. I haven't even seen one of these for years. The only currency available in the future is Mogadorian. It just doubles how surreal this is. I open the box and grab a paper, holding it close to my face. The date makes my eyes widen. May 19th, 2004. I've actually done it. I've traveled 15 years back in time.

I collapse against the newspaper stand. I was half-expecting it not to work-for me to be torn in half, scattered across time, or just to die from the attempt. But I'm here, albeit very tired, and I have everything about where the garde will be written down. I pinch the papers in my other hand, rubbing my thumb across the top, and then stop. I don't want to smear anything.

I have quite possibly the most important job on this planet. It's a lot of weight on my shoulders. I can feel hopelessness worming in when I think about the enormity of the task that I've started. No, I can't think about everything. Just focus on saving the garde. I have ten days to prepare and gather information about the garde before I have to make my move to save One.

The first thing I do is go back into the clothing store. I find a worker in the aisles and clear my throat. They notice me.

"Do you need help, sir?" They ask.

"Yes, I need to buy an atlas." Something else comes to mind as I pinch the papers. "And a backpack."

"Well, we don't have atlases here, but I can show you our backpacks for sale."

"That's good." I say. They lead me to an aisle near one side of the store with backpacks hung all along it. I grab one that looks sturdy. At a slow pace, I move to the front of the store. After a second of thinking, I grab a box of energy bars from the rack beside the cashier and plunk them down beside the backpack.

Before I exit the store, I carefully take the papers with all of my information out of my pocket and unfold them. They go in the backpack along with all but one of the energy bars. I unwrap that one and take a small bite, eyes roaming around. I see a library. That's a good place to start.

I enter, still nibbling on the energy bar. I don't want to eat it too fast. I go up to the counter where a librarian stands, scanning books.

"Hi, do you need help?" They ask, looking at my face. And then they blink in surprise, staring. What are they-?

My eyepatch. Right. I'd gotten so used to it being ignored by my Mogadorian inferiors, and nobody else dared to look at me. It was custom made from a Mogadorian metal, a hundred times stronger than any metal here on Earth. It's probably just that they've never seen someone so young missing an eye. I clear my throat and they startle, realizing how impolite they were being. I really don't care about that, though.

"Do you have any maps, or atlases?" I ask.

"Uh, yes, right over here," he says, walking out from behind the counter. I follow him over to a small desk, empty except for a stack of thick books with tiny tab separators sticking out. The desk is closed off on three sides by foot-high walls. I don't mean to, but the second I sit down, I know I'm going to drift off. I slip my new backpack under my head and my head drops.

I can tell I've been sleeping for a few hours when I'm woken up by a tap on my shoulder. Some of the crushing exhaustion has vanished, although I could still sleep longer. I'm immediately alert thanks to years of being woken suddenly by an alarm.

"We're closing," The male librarian tells me. I lift my head, slipping my backpack out from under it. I grab the top atlas, a thick book. On the cover it says 'maps of the whole world!' I lift it up.

"I want to buy this." I say. The librarian turns back.

"Our books aren't for sale."

"I'll pay double," I say. I don't have time to waste looking for a book store when there's a perfectly good atlas right here.

"They're not for sale," He repeats.

I pull a hundred dollar bill out of my pocket and extend it to him as I walk past. He grabs it and I don't hear any more resistance. I don't look back. It's dark outside when I get onto the sidewalk. I need food and a place to sleep. As I put the atlas in my backpack, I take my remaining money out of my pocket and count it. $63. That's more than enough for a few sandwiches from a grocery store, and I can find a rooftop.

I walk around for a few hours looking for a grocery store until I get too tired and enter a McDonalds that I've walked past a few times. It's not ideal, but I need something in my stomach. I buy two big Macs and a large cup of water and eat them right there in the fast food place. Having eaten something, I start to get tired again. I walk downtown and into an alley. Checking carefully, I fly up to a rooftop quickly and settle down, laying my backpack behind my head.

I'm immediately out like a light.


	3. Chapter 2

**This was long overdue, haha**

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Blinking...

Foggy…

I'm..on a rooftop.

Awareness.

I'm in the past.

How long have I been sleeping?

I sit upwards, my mind slow. I get the sense that I've been asleep longer than a night. I'm used to being completely alert when I wake up, but the jump must've changed that. Or how long I've been sleeping changed that. I should get a watch, or a flip phone. A way to track the days.

I take inventory. My backpack with the atlas, my papers, and five energy bars inside. $55 in my pocket. As I pick the backpack up, I notice the front-pressed against the roof as I slept-is damp. It rained and I wasn't woken up? The jump really took a lot out of me. I anxiously check inside the backpack to make sure the papers didn't get wet. They're as dry as when I put them in there. So the backpack is waterproof. That's handy.

So I'll have to steal some more money, and buy a watch and a calendar. That's what I've decided to use to keep track of the time.

I stretch, sighing, as I stand up. Yes, I've definitely been asleep a long time. The kinks in my body tell me that much. I don't realize just how long I was out until I go back to the newspaper stand and find them all with the date May 23rd, 2004. I let my arms drop slowly. I've been asleep for four days?!

That explains why I feel much better, practically back to normal. To test, I catch the papers with my mind and open the stand back up, floating them inside. The associated nausea is gone. So, my legacies are back to full strength too. That's some good news, even though this time jump moves up my timetable significantly.

As I walk to a mall I spotted when I was walking around before, I ponder my plan in my head. I come to the realization that I don't even have to fly to Malaysia if I can keep One off the Mogs' radar in the first place. She is discovered by photos of her ankle uploaded to a police database by a police detective two days before her death. May 27th, 2019, at 5:14 PM. This was in California, a small coastal town called Laguna Beach. That's all the details the system had on her location there.

Assuming the Mogadorian system picked up the image as soon as it was uploaded, I only have to be watching the police station that day to catch One. To be safe, I'll be watching the 26th and the 27th. And then, if I don't see her, I'll be at the airport so I can follow their plane.

I'm inside the mall now. The crowds of humans make me uneasy. My eye makes me stand out. Still, I walk into the crowd, ignoring the stares and double takes from people passing. There's a kiosk in the middle of the mall. I walk up to it and pick up an electric watch. It shows the time and the day. It doesn't look that bad either. I give $30 of my stolen money to the worker at the kiosk and walk away, strapping the watch around my wrist.

It's only when passing a scattering of tables where people sit eating that it hits me how hungry I am. I have $20 left and I spend $14.99 of it, chowing down most of a large meat-lovers pizza.

With $5.01 left, I ask a kiosk worker directions to a grocery store. It takes me across four streets, carrying my pizza box, before I find a Kroger. I purchase a roll of aluminum foil and wrap the last two pieces. I stick them in my backpack and then in goes my aluminum foil. I take stock: my atlas, my papers, my five energy bars, two wrapped pieces of pizza, and the aluminum foil. And then, of course, my watch, my backpack, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and $2.02.

There's several hours before nightfall. I'll fly once the sun has set. And then I glance down-my shirt has a bright red background. I'll need a darker color shirt or hoodie to blend in.

I go to a fountain in a less populated part of the city and sit down on an old wooden beside it. I immediately spot a mark. She's a little old lady with expensive looking clothes strutting on the sidewalk, a large purse hanging from her arm. I'm reminded of my life in Florida before Ethan found me, exploring the city by day and patrolling the beaches by night. A swell of nostalgia makes me lose focus for a few seconds.

I concentrate on the purse and pull the zipper open before yanking it off her arm. Items spill along the sidewalk and she gasps as if appalled by the universe. It's a simple matter to send her wallet skittering into the grass beside the sidewalk. She doesn't notice, busy staring down any passerby to help her. I wait until she walks away with her purse to walk over and pick up the wallet. I count the cash as I walk away. It's a few hundred dollars.

I return to the mall and buy a black hoodie. After a moment's thought, I buy a pair of black jeans and mostly black shoes. These will blend me in to the night sky.

I throw my Mogadorian footwear in the trash can in the bathroom. It's not that they wouldn't blend me in, they're certainly dark enough. It stems from a desire that I can't totally explain; a desire to separate myself from anything Mogadorian. My old life is over. This is quite literally my new life.

After I change, sticking my blue jeans into my backpack, I buy a cheap compass. I'm on the east coast, so I'll want to fly with the needle pointing north to my right. That will get me to the west coast, and from there I can zero in on Laguna Beach.

Part of the reason three garde were killed before they united was how integrated Mogadorians managed to become in such a short time. Resources, connections, databases. Luckily for Earth, I'm their inside man. The two bases I plan on destroying are Ashwood Estates and the West Virginia Mountain Base. These two bases are the most important and central to the Mogadorian presence on Earth, and destroying them this early will set them back years, if not totally cripple them.

Another thing I plan on doing is waking the entity on Earth. I know about the Sanctuary, and humans were gaining legacies after it was activated, at least before Setrakus Ra sucked it all out of the ground.

The problem with me saving One is that the other garde won't get a scar. I probably should've thought of this before, but it invalidates all of my information. If they don't get a scar, they won't take action, so as soon as One _doesn't_ die, the future will change. All or almost all of the locations and dates I have written down will mean nothing. The changes would grow more if I succeed at saving Two in three years, but of course she won't be in London without One's death prompting her cepan to move. So I need a way of keeping track of the garde, wherever they go. There happens to be a device capable of doing just that. A tablet that I remember from my short time in the penthouse belonging to Nine and Sandor. It was given to Malcolm Goode by Pittacus Lore shortly before he died.

It's too late to save Malcolm Goode from his abduction; he was captured before the time I'm in now, and I don't want to travel back in time again so soon. Nor do I want to wait however long until I think I'm ready for another jump. There would eventually be three of me at one time and I don't want to risk unwittingly doing something right now that could negatively effect the mission if I _did_ go back again and start from saving Malcolm. No, I need to get the tablet in this time.

I'm not sure exactly where Malcolm Goode had the tablet before it was taken by John Smith. Luckily, he's imprisoned at Ashwood Estates, which I plan on hitting after saving One. I can rescue him from there.

The man shook himself from deep thought, light from the streetlights reflecting off his metal eyepatch. In the dimming day, he sat, motionless as the sun dipped below the horizon and the last slices of sunlight disappeared. Then, tightening the straps of his backpack, he settled his arms to his sides and flew upwards in a blur, gaining speed as he travelled west. He was soon lost from sight.


End file.
